Lady Susan seemed to repent of her hasty movement, and recaptured Helen’s soft, brown-skinned hand.
“Yes, dear, I am,” she said, quietly. “At least, I choose to let that be my outward expression of myself, the expression by which you, Martin, anybody, may judge me. That certainly is my affair, and nobody else’s.”
She ceased stroking Helen’s hand a moment and looked up at her.
“But, dear, would you like to come inside me a moment? There is only one thing there, but it fills my house. Oh, Helen, if I had had a child!”
At that all the girl’s nature rose.
“Ah, dear aunt, dear aunt!” she said.
Lady Susan’s pretty patient smile did not leave her lips, nor did any tear come to her eyes. The sorrow was too old and too eternally alive for her to weep over it now. And she went on quite quietly:
“If only I had been given the chance even to be made as unhappy as you are making your father, dear, I should have loved it so. But it was denied me, and by no fault of mine. So I am learning, I hope, not to grumble. Ah, but it is hard sometimes, and I think I miss the joys of love as you would count joys, Helen, less than I miss what you would count its sorrows. But those are its opportunities. Dear, its possibilities in self-denial and self-abandonment. That is Love triumphant, not crowned with roses, but crowned with sharp, beloved thorns. And the tragedy of love is when there is none for whom it can sacrifice itself.”
She stroked Helen’s hand again gently.
“Make yourself complete, dear,” she said; “there I am entirely at one with you. But, remember, our souls are like rose-trees, I think. You cut and prune them, if you are a wise gardener, for you know that by the cutting, the renunciation, you do not check or hinder your development, but you encourage it. You will be the more fragrant, the fuller of blossom by that which you might hastily say was a piece of cruelty, a stunting of your growth.”